In my recent live presentation/session for PLENK2010 I was trying to argue that if we want to get any further with the notion of Personal Learning Environments (PLE), we need to stop staring exclusively at the current (and transient) level of technological (Web) development. Instead, we need to analyse the “personal learning” side more seriously.

One possible perspective to take here is a (socio-)historical one. What types of learning have emerged over time and coupled to what (media-)historical developments? Personally, I find it rather useless to talk about environments for personal learning (or Personal Learning Environments) without an exploration of the types of learning (or the types of learning activity) these, so called, environments are supposed to constitute, support, or facilitate (you name it).

In their recent book chapter “Lernkultur oder Lernkulturen – was ist neu an der ,Kultur des Lernens’?” Erdmann & Rückriem (2010) discuss, among other things, the emergence of new types of learning (Lernformen). In this context they provide a short and simplified overview of three central (media)-historical types of learning that they distinguish:

Book- & text-culture allow for the emergence of a new media-historical from of “knowledge”. The book (text) becomes the new leading medium. In this context “learning” emerges as “activity” (Lerntätigkeit). De-contextualised, systematic taucht-learning becomes the dominant format and gets institutionalised in “school”. Contextualised, experience-based learning is gradually de-valued in society and taught-learning is treated as “learning” par excellence.

what gets on centre-stage is the learning of sense-constituting. Erdmann & Rückriem acknowledge that the former (media-)historical types of learning were also “sense-based”, of course. However, sense was either coupled with the actual contextualised personal (and social) experience, or the de-contextualised (book-)knowledge. What the authors see emerging is the de-coupling of knowledge (generating?) system(s) and meaning (generating/constituting?) systems(s) in the information society. Learning how to constitute sense becomes thus an important individual and societal task. This new type of learning can be (should be?) characterised as net-worked (I spare me a more detailed description of the “networkedness” as it is understood by Erdmann & Rückriem).

Erdmann & Rückriem prosose that these historical types of learning have emerged and developed in a successive, irreversible manner. However, they co-exist largely unconnected (which is really to be expected in the early stage of the ongoing cultural transformation).

I am not trying to say that Erdmann & Rückriem (2010) are drawing the one and only meaningful distinctions here. Nevertheless, they point us in an increasingly important direction for analysis and discourse:

…if we want to theorise about “learning” what boundaries do we want to draw? … and why?

I am finally out of project work and will dedicate the next 12 months to reading, thinking, and writing. Enough of EU funded R&D for a while!

It was really about time to re-focus on my personal educational and academic interests. Naturally the move forces me to go through yet another “transition” phase, requiring considerable adjustments of all kinds. Tiring.. and refreshing at the same time.

This is probably old news for the professional usability crowd. However, I have recently re-visited a number of ISO standards that I made use of within my earlier consulting work on human-centered design, Web (and Software) usability.

It appears that ISO 9241 that used to be titled “Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals” is being re-titled and re-organised.
It carries now the more generic title “Ergonomics of Human System Interaction” and ISO is renumbering the standard so that it can include many more topics:

100 series: Software ergonomics

200 series: Human system interaction processes

300 series: Displays and display related hardware

400 series: Physical input devices – ergonomics principles

500 series: Workplace ergonomics

600 series: Environment ergonomics

700 series: Application domains – Control rooms

900 series: Tactile and haptic interactions

The first part of ISO 9241 that has been renumbered seems to be the old part 10 that is now Part 110 “Dialogue principles”. However, the dialogue principles still seem to be the same.

For folks who are interested in Web usability and design issues there are two (relatively new) relevant parts already following the new numbering system:

Part 151: Guidance on World Wide Web user interfaces

Part 171: Guidance on software accessibility

What I also find noteworthy is the fact that good old ISO 13407 “Human-centred design processes for interactive systems” will be integrated into ISO 9421. The new draft version is titled “Human-centred design for interactive systems” and should become part 210 in the new numbering system of ISO 9241. I am not sure yet what is actually being changed (apart from the number…).

PLENK2010 seems to be a timely extension of our recent collaboration on the upcoming e-book – G. Siemens, S. Downes & F. Kop (Eds.), Personal learning environments and personal learning networks (working title): Athabasca University Press – and a follow up of some of the issues raised around the PLE conference 2010 in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago.

Though I have never tried to run courses on the scale of a MOOC there are some striking parallels between what George & Co. are promoting in respect to free-choice of loosely-coupled tools as an important part of (re-)mediation of (learning) activity, and my own educational intervention work of recent years. Since I am slowly working my way back into facilitating “courses” (if that is the right term…) in higher education, I am curious to see what works (and what doesn’t) in the context of #PLENK2010.

If nothing else… it is going to be interesting if my (more theoretical) reflections on the concept of personal learning environments will resonate at all with course participants. It looks like we will find out sometimes in late November when I am (tentatively) scheduled for a live session in the week focusing on “Critical perspectives on PLE/PLN” (so far only a place holder).

Finally, we received the review comments for our text on “Modeling the personal adult learner: the concept of PLE re-interpreted”. The final version of this text will go into G. Siemens, S. Downes & F. Kop (Eds.), Personal learning environments and personal learning networks (working title): Athabasca University Press.

As usual, some of the review comments are helpful while others make little sense at all. What particularly amused me was the following: we make an explicit statement that we see our overall contribution as a reply to Johnson & Liber (2008) and that we want to extend the discussion of what these authors put forward.

Now, one of the reviewers actually wrote the following final statement commenting on our text:

Alright… I am just getting ready for the next leg of this trip. Spent some fabulous time in Sydney, ACT and in the South-East of NSW. Now, off to Christchurch, NZ, for some critter-free holidays on beautiful South Island.

Rock pools at Burning Palms Beach in the Royal National Park, NSW (shot yesterday in the late afternoon)

In a recently published text titled “The future of Activity Theory” Engeström (2009) talks about (what in the US is apparently called) the “gold standard” of educational research:

The “gold standard” emphasizes the use of randomized controlled trials, the selection of valid control groups, and “scalability” implying large statistical samples and multiple research sites. The “gold standard” correctly sees educational research as interventionist research. The randomized control trials are meant to assess the effectiveness of educational interventions. The model of intervent’ion research is taken from fields such as medicine and agriculture. As one observer put it:

For instance, if I want to test the effectiveness of weed control measures, I randomly assign different plots of crops to the experimental or control conditions. Then, they all get treated the same otherwise as far as weather, fertilizer, hours of day light and other pests. The crops are monitored and observations are made throughout the growing season and a person might be able to see the result visually if the results are remarkable enough. But the telling evidence is in the yield, when the crops are harvested. If there is a significant difference in yield in all the experimental plots as opposed to the control plots, then we might attribute it towards the independent variable, which in this case is weed control. (http://specialed.wordpress.com/2006/02/10/educational-researchthegold-standard!)

The “gold standard” thinking in educational research starts from the
assumption that researchers know what they want to implement, how they
want to change the educational practice. In other words, the intervention and its desired outcomes are well defined in advance. Tne task of research is to check whether or not the desired outcomes are actually achieved. This predetermined and linear view of interventions is actually shared by much of the literature on design experiments

I find this a noteworthy aspect of Engeström’s critique. In fact, he emphasises the similarity of assumptions that seem to drive design experiments (and design-based research) and the middle-of-the-road “gold standard” approach to educational research. In Engeström’s (2009) words again:

The main difference between “gold standard” interventions and design
experiments seems to be that the former expect the design of the intervention to be complete at the outset while the latter, recognizing the complexity of educational settings, expect the design to proceed through multiple iterations of “refinement.” But even design experiments aim at closure and control:

Design experiments were developed as a way to carry out formative
research to test and refine educational designs based on theoretical
principles derived from prior research. This approach of progressive
refinement in design involves putting a first version of a design into the world to see how it works. Then, the design is constantly revised basedon experience, until all the bugs are worked out. (Collins et aI., 2004,p. 18; emphasis added)

Collins et al. (2004, pp. 18-19) compare educational design research
to the design of cars and other consumer products, using Consumer
Reports as their explicit model for evaluation. They don’t seem to notice any significant difference between finished mass products and such open ended, continuously co-configured products as educational innovations (for co-configuration, see Engestrom, 2008b; Victor & Boynton, 1998). A strange obsession with “completeness” runs like a red thread through their argument: Thus, in the jigsaw, all pieces of the puzzle come together to form a complete understanding. (Collins et al. 2004, p. 23; emphasis added) What this overlooks is that “one can never get it right, and that innovation may best be seen as a continuous process, with particular product embodiments simply being arbitrary points along the way” (von Hippel & Tyre,1995, p. 12)…

Later in the same text Engeström (2009) makes an important point that I also tried to get across in our recent Cascading Change Symposium ( CaCha09 ) at ASCILITE09:

… resistance and subversion are not accidental disturbances that need to be eliminated. They are essential core ingredients of interventions, and they need to have a prominent place in a viable intervention methodology.

This is a view I share completely. In fact, any intervention that does not produce a level of resistance among key actors probably doesn’t even attempt to go beyond the existing mode of operation… and thus remains within the horizon of first-order change at its best.

On Monday, December 7. we carried out our Cascading Change symposium at the 26th ASCILITE conference in Auckland, New Zealand. For various reasons the original group of nine contributors was cut down to four who actually made it to Auckland. While I certainly would have liked to meet all the folks who had committed to the proposal, I think we would have been (even more) in trouble with the time-slot of 60 min that we had been allocated. Even if you get nine contributors to limit their air-time to 5 min statements (which already is a hard job) you end up covering 45 min. An open, conversational format is simply not possible in such a time frame.

So, even with the four remaining contributors we covered about 30 to 35 min with a few words of general welcome and introduction and a series of short impulse presentations of about 5 min each, before we could even open up to the larger plenum. We had agreed upon this format in a lively, preparatory conversation on Sunday afternoon before the actual conference kicked off. In fact, I think we should have brought that conversation on stage… but more to that later.

Altogether, our slightly eclectic individual statements/presentations apparently worked as a conversation opener. There was clearly interest in the over-arching theme and present ASCILITErs were eager to chime in an voice their opinions. However, when things just started to get somewhat interesting we already had to wrap up the session and disperse the convention. I found this extremely unfortunate. So, in retrospect I should have never accepted the reduction of the original 90 min time-slot by the planners of the overall conference programme. On the contrary, I think I should have demanded two hours as a minimum to tackle a demanding topic in a conversational format with a (potentially) large group of people.

For me this is not a mere matter of delivering a good performance for an audience. I actually want to hear other voices and opinions on a particular theme and not only broadcast what I have already thought through and then finish that off with a little harmless question and answer ping-pong. The latter seems to be considered the height of audience participation in academic conferences these days.

This brings me to the physical space. The theme of ASCILITE09 apparently was “Same places, different spaces”. Unfortunately, our symposium was placed in an enormous, theatre-style lecture hall that can certainly be qualified as yet another example of the “same spaces” (as usual) that one generally encounters in educational conferences. No matter what you do in such a space… it does not create an egalitarian, conversational flow. There are some actors on stage… and there are spectators. Our attempt to compensate a little by dragging in some chairs from the coffee break area didn’t show much effect, I suppose. It only ensured that the contributors moved at least away from the central podium. An appropriate “space” is just another aspect that I simply should not (and hopefully won’t) compromise about. A symposium simply requires “different spaces” than a good old lecture hall… no matter how fancy and well equipped it is.

I had a few conversations with George Siemens and Rob Fitzgerald during the remaining conference days on the symposium, the presentation formats encountered, and the general failure to create real, genuine dialogue within the actual conference programmes… and not only during the breaks and social get-togethers. In the case of a symposium I am willing to do away with any kind of impulse presentations. I can easily imagine to simply start with a conversation among a group of informed peers on stage… that gradually draws in more and more participants. It would provide a hyperlink-cloud around the individual contributors to get an idea of where they are coming from, and possible end with recommendations on further readings… plus some form of mediated conversation and exchange beyond the event. No presentations, no lecture halls, no 60 min time-slots. Stay tuned… I will try this somewhere sometimes in 2010.

I am in the middle of my preparations for another longish trip to New Zealand and Australia. Tonight’s heavy rain here in Nürnberg makes the prospect of diving into spring and early summer in the Southern Hemisphere even more attractive. And… I do need a break and re-charge my batteries again. I can feel that.

This time I am renting out both my apartments in Nürnberg and Vienna. Quite a hassle … but also an interesting exercise. It kind of forces me to sort through my stuff and see how quickly and painlessly I can tuck away my belongings and leave my home-bases to someone else. Economically this all makes perfect sense, of course. Rents are currently my biggest cost item… so, finding someone else to move in while I am gone allows me to set up a pretty decent travel budget.

The overall trip will be kicked off by attending ASCILITE 2009 in Auckland. Followed by a two-week car trip exploring the Northland region. Around Christmas a hop over to Sydney will bring about a reunion with Anne and Stephen Bartlett-Bragg (its about time guys!)… and hopefully some fireworks in Sydney harbour. Then, some trip in South-Eastern Australia, before flying from Sydney to Christchurch to start off on another car/camping trip in the upper parts of South Island. Possibly some hiking in the Abel Tasman national park. Finally, a flight to Auckland… and then from there back into the Bavarian winter.